In 2018, I began researching a book on
sectarian pirate radio in Belfast and I had an article appear in a number of
newspapers asking for anyone with information and providing a contact email
address. On August 18th, 2019, I received an email from an account
titled ‘the beer society’ but signed c/o Michael Steven. I responded and there
was a back and forth with emails and eventually I agreed to travel to Belfast and
said I would met up perhaps in a hotel in the centre of the city.
On August 20th I received an email
asking to meet with Stephen Caves at his home which I was informed was off
Tennant Street which is off the Shankill Road near the Spectrum Community
Centre. I told Michael to tell Stephen that I would visit Belfast and on 27th
August I travelled north from Dublin, staying at the Maldron Hotel located to
the rear of the famous heritage pub The Crown Liquor Saloon.
On the morning of the meeting, while I perhaps
should have been nervous or apprehensive, I was in fact excited and looking
forward to the meeting and gaining a valuable insight into pirate radio in
Belfast. For someone born in the early 60s, I was aware of all the events that
made up the Troubles propelling it to front page news around the world, but
being from the South, I had little understanding of what it was like living in
that maelstrom of sectarian violence and paramilitary activity. There was no
sense that I perhaps was entering ‘enemy territory’.
I stepped out onto the street and jumped into
the back of a taxi at the rank. I told the driver ‘Coniston Close, off Tennant
Street, please’. There was a moment of silence, and the driver turned to me in
the back seat and calmly enquired
‘With
that accent?’
This was a reference to my obvious southern,
Dublin accent and here was I asking this driver to take me into what would be
seen as the heart of unionist/loyalist life in Belfast. I said yes and he moved
off. After two sets of red traffic lights, we reached a third and eventually
the driver asked the obvious question ‘why?’ I dd not want to go into too much
detail so I said that visiting a radio engineer as a radio historian. We drove
up the Shankill Road, the rows of union jack bunting, union jacks on every
lamppost and the infamous UVF, UDA and British military murals decorating
several gable walls.
I arrived at the house and the driver, I think
out of concern, asked me if I wanted him to wait, I said no as I did not know
how long our conversation would last for but in fairness gave me a card with a
taxi number on it. I knocked on the door after asking a couple of neighbours
exactly where Stephen Caves flat was, each one looking me up and down
suspiciously. I eventually entered a flat designated for Stephen who was
wheelchair bound, missing part of a leg from the knee down.
He introduced himself as did I likewise and
explained my research into the thorny subject of (a) Illegal broadcasting and
(b) the sectarian use of those broadcasts. Stephen’s friend and what appeared
to be a carer, Michael arrived dressed in a grey suit and obviously had a
hearing issue as he had aids in both ears and an unusual way of speaking that
took me a few minutes to get a hold of to understand.
Stephen Thompson Caves was born
in November 1951 in Belfast. He was just 18 years old when the Troubles began
in August 1969. The Troubles would continue until 1998 when a peace agreement
known as The Good Friday Agreement eased tensions, saw paramilitaries disarm
and installed democracy at Stormont. In January 1971 Stephen, described as 19
and unemployed of Tate Street, was charged with riotous assembly with 22 others
at Urney Street on January 24th. The following month was sentenced
to six months in prison for both the original offence and failing to turn up in
accordance with bail conditions.
Stephen told me that he was a loyalist and was
involved in Radio Shankill in the early years of the Troubles. But once he
imparted that part of the story to me what followed was quite remarkable as his
involvement in pirate radio continued.
He told me he ran numerous pirate radio
stations usually broadcasting on 101mhz FM. One of the longest running stations
was Speak Your Peace. He described the station as a community instruction
station, grassroots radio giving voice to his community. When I asked him was
any of the stations ever raided by the RUC (now the PSNI), he told me once. I
asked if it was for illegal broadcasting or interference to legal broadcasters
he said no,
‘They knocked on the door one Friday evening, cause we, I had a friend who knew how to identify and dismantle a pipe bomb that may have been placed under your car. And the coppers believed that if this person knew how to dismantle one, he knew how to build it. But they were in hard luck as we only used a tape to play the information, he wasn’t there in person on that occasion’.
He went onto also tell me that they would
broadcast a comparison style show, not for petrol, insurance or foods but where
to find, how much to pay and what was the best drugs to buy in Belfast on any
given weekend. I was shocked but he reassured me that the show that followed
that was a ‘gardening show’, which he explained was someone telling listeners
how to grow their own drugs like marijuana.
Speak Your Peace first went on the air Sunday
2nd October 1994 from 9am to 8pm. The transmitter would be fired up every
Sunday for as they said, ‘up to Christmas to give a voice to the oppressed and
depressed’. However, the station was raided on Monday December 12th
1994.
Over two hours, I asked questions and I
listened to him telling me tales of the various stations he ran interspersed
with questions about how safe I felt visiting ‘enemy territory’ just off the
Shankill Road. I was in no doubt from what was said, names discussion and at
times what was not being said that Stephen had loyalist paramilitary links.
As the conversation continued, he told me that
one of the stations he was involved with was known as ‘Out 101’ in 1995 which was
on the air supporting LGBT rights in Belfast. This seemed such a dichotomy, on
one hand the Christian conservative ‘anti-homosexual’ Loyalist and Orange Order
and the other a man who was definitely Protestant and loyalist in leanings but was
a supporter of something so opposite to what I had been led to believe was hard
to take in.
Other stations in the 101-fold were ‘BARC, the
Belfast Autonomous Radio Collective’ and one of the first uses of the
transmitter in 1986, Radio Free Ulster, described as broadcasting.
‘With an undiluted programme of loyalist music
and songs.’
That station operated during a loyalist workers
strike in March of that year.
Towards the end of April 1994, the station was
opened identifying itself as May Day 101 in the run up to May Day. The city was
still in the grip of sectarian violence and one presenter stated that in the
three days since the station came on the air, nine people had been murdered in
the city. He added,
‘As
we listen to the soundtrack of Belfast (the sound of Army helicopters flying
overhead outside the window of the secret studio) we’ve got the RUC, the
British Army, the UDA, the UVF the IRA and the INLA claiming to be our
protectors, but we are hostages. MAY DAY 101 is a boil on the bum of
broadcasting, the acne of the airwaves.’
In advance of my contact with Stephen, with the
help of a friend I interviewed to another gentleman in the Spectrum centre,
known as ‘Graham’. He too was involved in pirate radio in the early 1970s in
Belfast and had a fascinating story to tell but it was the after that visit
that I was to relate here. My colleague asked me if I wanted him to call me a
taxi or would I like to walk down the Shankill Road towards the city centre. To
me I felt it was a chance I would never get again, so along with a friend of his,
we began to walk down the Shankill Road, I was taking in every shop window,
every business, every SUV with well-built men with loyalist tattooed arms
intimidatingly leaning out the open windows. Halfway down the road, they asked
if I wanted to have a beer, and I felt this was a now or never moment. We went
into the pub, unions jacks hanging from the ceiling, pictures of the then Queen
Elizabeth II on the walls. We sat at a round barrel in the middle of the floor,
and they ordered a pint of Tennent’s for me. We chatted quietly, encouraged to
keep my southern accent on the down low.
Fifteen minutes in and just about to leave, an
older customers, late fifties or early sixties stood beside me and uttered,
‘it
must be terrible being a Southern Catholic’
I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me,
my embarrassment for the two lads was churning. They reassured him that I was
with them and that I was OK!
‘What
a southern catholic Fenian doing in a decent pub like mine?’ even though he was
just a customer and not an owner or management.
Another few comments and I reached the end of
the tether.
‘How
do you know I’m a southern catholic, I could be Protestant, atheist, or even a
Jehovah’s Witness?
‘I
know by the look of you you’re catholic.’
‘OK
you’re right, I am a southern Catholic from Dublin, but I know what I am. I’m
like a box of corn flakes, you know what you are getting, you are the multipack
of cereals, Presbyterian, Anglican, Methodist, Free Presbyterian, Church of
Ireland, Church of England or but I know one thing for sure, you’re the box no
one likes.’
There was an uneasy silence, I was either going
to be flattened or run like a hare being chased by a greyhound out the door. It
seemed like ages before he said anything.
‘Hi, fair play to you kid’ and with that he
tapped my back and actually sat down and joined us while we quickly finished
what was left in or pints. I eventually arrived at the end of the Shankill,
said my goodbyes and thank you and returned to the Maldron to muse over what
had happened and begin to transcribe the notes I had made.
Soon after as I continued my research on the opposite side of the divide, including a very informative and generous visit to Radio Failte's headquarters, I stopped into a pub near the Falls Road, the nationalist side. I ordered a pint and off handedly remarked to the bartender that his pint was 10p dearer than a similar pint on the Shankill Road. He paused, had a good look at me, leaned down slightly and queitly said,
'Once you finish that one it's time to head off pal.'
Then on February 9th I received this
message from Michael.
Dear Eddie,
Stephen Caves died on 2nd February 2020 from terminal cancer. We
both knew he did not have long to live when we met you.
Stephen wanted his pirate radio show recordings to be sent to you on
audio cassette. I have also noted that he has some pirate radio advertising
leaflets that he wanted to send to you as well.
I am currently putting Stephen’s cassette tapes into a pile for illegal
transmissions and another for legal transmissions.
I hope through sending you these recordings, a wide range of people
will not only be able to hear Stephen’s pirate radio recordings but remember
Stephen as well.
Thanks from Michael Steven
Stephen’s passing was announced to the Belfast community,
‘It is with deep sadness that we announce the death of Stephen Caves, Director of Trans Pride NI, who passed away this morning. A long-term activist, human, disability and environmental rights campaigner, he will be sorely missed.’
Michael wrote in tribute,
It was lovely to see my old comrade resting in peace
yesterday. He was wearing the grey waistcoat that I gave him, when he was an
amazing groomsman at my wedding in 2014. I was also pleased to see that he was
wearing the purple Society for the Preservation of Beers from the Wood tie, a
Society that he was a member of right up until his death. Stephen took great
pleasure in handing out leaflets from this Society and many other human rights,
disability and environmental groups he was involved with. In his later years,
he even instructed his dog walkers to collect money they found on the street to
Hearing Dogs for the Deaf! His kindness and caring nature will be greatly
missed.
I was devastated and saddened. Michael had offered to post the cassettes to me but when in subsequent emails told me there were over forty tapes, I suggested that I would travel once again to Belfast to collect the donation to the Irish Pirate Radio Archive.
I arranged to meet Michael in the MAC in the Cathedral Quarter. He asked if his partner could join us for lunch while we completed the handover, I said no problem and as a gesture I would pay for lunch. Adrianne joined us and I honestly became confused, to the point when as I drove back to Dublin later that day, I had to stop at a services station just to put everything into context.
The life in Belfast that I had been brought up
to seemingly know and understand was a different and more diverse city that I
ever could have imagined. Michael Steven, Stephen’s friend, had been born
female and known as Lindsay while his married partner Adrianne Elson, they were
married in 2014, was born a man named Adrian. In 2022, it was revealed in the
newspapers that the couple had given birth to beautiful twins named Mavis and Christin.
